


This Thin Veneer

by deliriumbubbles



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 01:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1326658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliriumbubbles/pseuds/deliriumbubbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during S1 “Laryngitis.” Mercedes is suddenly ‘Hot Chocolate,’ and Santana can’t stand it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Thin Veneer

Santana’s insides  _burn_  every time she looks at Mercedes Jones. Mercedes is suddenly ‘Hot Chocolate,’ and Santana can’t stand it.  
  
Never mind that Schuester plays favorites anyway, so he always chooses Rachel for the lead parts no matter what they are. He also has whitey guilt, so he makes sure that Mercedes gets to wail on a note or two at the end of a song, or occasionally, to take the deep, soulful solo. It’s like he doesn’t even see Santana. Like she’s invisible or something. But that’s okay. She was being truthful when she said that she guessed her purpose in the club was to look hot. It’s not like she’s gotten any other indication from Mr. Shoe.  
  
But no, Hot Chocolate Bacon isn’t content with that. She has to be in the Cheerios now, getting solos there, too, and grabbing Coach Sylvester’s attention and everyone else’s. After Quinn left, Santana was next in line to be coronated Queen Bee, but Coach Sylvester hasn’t named a new head cheerleader, even though it’s been some time. For some reason, the Queen Bee thing hadn’t happened, and suddenly Mercedes was popular with everyone, just by being  _nice_  and singing that Love Your Body song. Santana would like to think that she could get the Cheerios to do something like that, but she’s just not sure they’d follow her lead.  
The worst, though, the very very worst thing?  
  
Is how Quinn looks at her.  
  
Santana can sing. She wouldn’t be in Glee if she and Britt hadn’t followed Quinn into the club, but she can sing. Still, she never gets any damn solos, so she sits in the back, holding pinkies with her bff and watching Quinn make that face. That  _stupid_  sappy face.  
  
Oh, Santana  _saw_  her. When Mercedes and Kurt made their ‘debut’ during Madonna week, she caught that look: long lashed eyes wide, pink mouth open, and her fingers splayed together. Joy. Just joy. And it wasn’t the first time either. It sure wasn’t because she was so happy to see the Cheerios prancing around.  
  
Santana saw that same look on her face right before Sectionals when Mercedes stole the ballad from Miss Pity Me Berry.  
  
And now, sitting there, again in the back, Santana spies Puck pulling Mercedes into his solo and making it a duet. It’s not that she wants him, exactly. She could have him horizontal any time she wanted. Maybe it’s a territorial thing, or maybe it’s that Quinn perks up for the first time in a couple of days and makes her dumb ‘O’ face the moment Mercedes starts to sing.  
  
And inside, Santana burns, burns, burns.

  
***

  
  
“I bet she gets too hungry. Porker.” Santana stirs her slushie moodily with the straw as she walks beside Brittany, who is trying to remember how to use her cell phone. “Push the little thing that looks like a receiver.”  
  
Brittany looks up. “Like the football guy?”  
  
“ _No_.” Santana stops in the hallway, grabs the phone, and points to the symbol. “That. You dial the number, and push that.”  
  
“Numbers have too many numbers,” Brittany complains.  
  
“Hit the big button that says menu instead. You have all your numbers saved, remember?”  
  
“Ohhh.” Brittany looked at the phone again. “Did you know that a cafeteria was this place in Greece where they stick tubes up your lady business to make you pee?”  
  
Santana turns her head sharply as she recognizes Quinn and Mercedes’ voices. Pulling Brittany closer to the lockers, she holds a finger to her lips.  
  
“-I’m stuck living with him right now, but at least if you guys are dating, I won’t have to spend so much time listening to his insane theories on how Super Mario Brothers changed civilization.” Quinn pauses before continuing in a sensitive, almost raspy voice. “But you do realize that he’s using you and your popularity so he won’t get thrown in the dumpster.”  
  
“Why else would he want her,” Santana hisses.  
  
Brittany looks around. “I think my hearing’s going bad. I can hardly hear you.”  
  
“Shut  _up_!” Santana clamps her hand over Brittany’s mouth.  
  
“I’m not you,” Mercedes tells Quinn. “I’ve never had a guy like me for anything. But now I’m such a steaming mug of hot chocolate that the studliest guy in school wants to use me to harvest some mojo.”  
  
“I just don’t want you getting hurt.”  
  
Santana seethes, holding Brittany so tightly that the other girl is squirming to get away like a wiggly puppy.  
  
“I know what this is. My heart’s safe.”  
  
“Oh, I’m not worried about your  _heart_ ,” Quinn says seriously. “I might be okay with this? But not even  _Puck_  is going to be able to call off Santana.”  
  
With that Brittany lets out a squeak, which is thankfully drowned out by the din of the hallway, and flees a few feet before looking back at Santana with a sort of wounded confusion. Santana blinks. Then her eyes narrow into slits.  
  
She storms down the hallway, and after a moment’s hesitation, Brittany follows.  
  
“Quinn wants to protect  _her_.”  
  
“Am I dreaming? I don’t understand anything that’s happening!” Brittany pouts as she runs after Santana.

  
***

  
  
Santana admitted to herself that she loved Quinn Fabray during Cheer Camp during the summer. It was a gradual realization. Lopezes don’t do epiphanies. No, it was a process. Her prim but sweet voice, the way her hair bounces or gets in her face when messed up, that frozen look she gets before she starts to cry, the wrinkle between her brows when she’s worried, confused, or calls someone a moron.  
  
She and Santana would sit in their workout clothes after the long days and chatter in Spanish. Quinn said she’d like the practice. Quinn really is a perfectionist, but Santana just liked the way that Quinn mispronounced the words. She understood the syntax well enough. But though she over articulates her words in English, there was this soft, shy Midwestern bend to the vowels when she spoke Spanish.  
  
Oh, the afternoon when Santana had tried to teach Quinn to roll her “Rs”.  
  
“I’m going to get out of here,” Quinn said certainly. “I’m clever. I’ll get into a good school, and leave Lima behind forever.”  
  
“What about your family?” Santana pretended to stare up at the clouds, but was really peaking back at Quinn all the while. The fading summer light seemed to make the sheen of sweat on her forehead glow. Quinn moved one hand back to smooth over the hair escaping from her mussed ponytail.  
  
“College isn’t a question with my parents. I’m going, whether it kills me or not.” So matter-of-fact. Quinn shrugged. “I want to go. My sister’s married already. Did I tell you that? With kids. I want to do things with my life before all that, though.”  
  
“I want to go to college, too. But it is a question.” Santana smirked and caught Quinn’s eye. “ _Mija_! Why haven’t you filled out the scholarship forms yet?!”  
  
It was the giggle. The soft little giggle that was Quinn’s alone, and the way she daintily brought up her hand to cover her mouth.

  
***

  
  
The song should be “The Girl is Mine,” but there is no such song. Or none that Santana knows of because she doesn’t listen to folk music from lesbian college bands. That’s the song they’re singing, though, since Mercedes responded to her challenge, passed back and forth via notes over Puck’s back in History class. It’s the closest thing that Santana can get, so she’ll take it. She’ll take it.  
  
Really, it’s sick enough that Quinn doesn’t always sit with her and Brittany during Glee practice anymore, and they hardly see her now that she’s not in the Cheerios. Santana will steal what she can get back from Mercedes, if she can.  
  
For some reason, though, when the singing starts, Quinn doesn’t do it. Santana and Mercedes, singing their hearts out, but for different reasons, moving around one another... but Quinn isn’t looking happy. She’s not looking joyful, delighted, like her socks are being knocked off by Mercedes brilliance, so Santana can’t even pretend that Quinn’s looking at  _her_  that way.  
  
Instead she’s watching the performance with a little crease in her brow. Worried. Not joyful at all.  
  
It’s not  _fair_.  
  
The song heats up as they circle round each other. Shoe tries to come between them, and before Santana knows it she’s shoving Mercedes with all of her strength. The girl actually falls back a little before surging forward, and Shoe, the fool, tries to them both back. He couldn’t really hold Mercedes back. He’s string bean  _weak_. Not if she really wanted to clobber Santana.  
  
Santana’s not a fool. But it’s not fair. She can’t say what she feels, can’t even  _sing_  what she feels because they don’t make smooth R&B songs about girls loving angel-faced knocked-up ex-cheerleaders.  
  
She can’t even have a vicarious smile.

  
***

  
  
“That “Weezie” bit was over the line,” Quinn says sharply, following her out of the music room. “Way over the line.”  
  
Santana turns, pursing her lips and giving Quinn her scariest bitchface.  
  
Quinn is unimpressed. “Don’t look at me like that. I  _taught_  you that look.”  
  
“Your new bff doesn’t need a skinny little preggo to fight her battles for her,” Santana sneers in return. She turns again and makes sure her sweet hips snap in her signature walk as she tears through the hallway.  
  
Quinn taught her that walk, too. Well, worked with her on it.  


  
***

  
  
_Glee Club is about a myriad of voices coming together as one!_  
  
Only, Santana knows that it’s  _not_. Like, at all. It’s about the stars getting their limelight, without trying, and Santana in the background. It’s pretty much confirmed when they get the song for the end of the week, and Rachel and Finn are on lead again.  
  
Well, obviously, right?  
  
While they’re onstage, Santana sees, out of the corner of her eye, Quinn and Mercedes reaching for each other.  
  
Some days, Santana wonders why she’s still in this club.

  
***

  
  
Mr. Shoe walks around the music room as he rubs his hands together, looking like the probably has a brand spankin’ new bug up his ass this week, and new assignments to dole out.  
  
Santana sits in the back with Brittany and reapplies her lipgloss.  
  
“Now that you’ve all gotten a chance to sing your solos-”  
  
Without thinking, Santana looks at him dead on and arches a brow so high that it’s like it’s trying to kiss her ponytail. “Not everyone. Not everyone sang their solo.”  
  
Shoe is caught off guard. He looks around the room, and his brows tighten. It’s clear that he’s remembering each of the performances, running through his kids to see who they missed.  
  
 _Think hard, little man._  Santana quirks her mouth to the side. “Quinn didn’t sing.”  
  
Quinn, who is sitting with Mercedes and Kurt in the weirdest little trio Santana’s ever seen, swivels her head back to glare at Santana. It’s not her fault if Quinn doesn’t want to sing, but it’s not like she’s bad or anything. She just doesn’t scream over everyone else.  
  
 _”Our God is an awesome God... He reigns from Heaven above...” Quinn sang to herself as she boxed up the props from practice. “With wiiiisdom, power and love... Our God is an awesome God...”  
  
Santana was busy watching Quinn’s taut legs peeking out from under her skirt. This was an activity that required her full attention.  
  
“Hey, do you want to come to my youth group tonight? We’re talking about creating chastity clubs in our high schools,” Quinn offered suddenly.  
  
Santana nodded and shrugged her head to the side. “Sure. I’m all about chastity.”  
  
“Yay. I can take you there. I go to the Baptist church... the one by the river?”  
  
Santana, as her mother and sisters and Nana, was a Catholic. “Sure. Um, should I bring anything?”  
  
“Nothing but your spirit!”_  
  
“All right then.” Shoe looks at Quinn. “Are you ready?”  
  
Quinn spares another angry look at Santana, then starts to rise. “As I’ll ever be.”  
  
Kurt gives her a hand up, and Quinn walks over to the piano and leans back on it. She draws in a deep breath, then sighs heavily before giving a nod to the piano player.  
  
Her voice starts a beat before the piano, a high, thin sound, and Quinn’s eyes fall closed as though blocking out her audience.  
  
“Sometimes... is never quite enough... if you’re flawless... then you’ll win our love...”  
  
It takes Santana a moment to place the song. It’s not a new song.  
  
Santana won’t call it an epiphany, but something struck her, and she turned her head as Quinn sang so sweetly a song about only getting the veneer of affection, of being pushed to tears by the people you looked up to. Of feeling worthless. Being  _made_  to feel worthless, and then feeling like you deserved it.  
  
Brittany poked her, and Santana waved her off. “Got something in my eye.”  
  
“We’ll love you, just the way you are, if you’re perfect...” When Quinn finishes singing, the others are very quiet. Quinn doesn’t look at anyone directly, then shrugs. “It’s not a complete performance. I forgot my costume. Coach Sylvester’s tracksuit.”  
  
That cracks the Glee club up, because the coach is kind of the team’s nemesis and they all know it. Who can resist a crack on her? But Santana frowns, because... it’s true. It’s true that’s how Coach Sylvester makes them feel, and she  _knows_  that Quinn was the most susceptible to that of all of them, trained at the woman’s knee, practically. They’d joked at camp that Quinn was going to divorce her parents and be adopted by the coach. Get her hair chopped off. Walk around in tracksuits all the time and yell at random people on the street. Some of the girls had thought the coach might forgive Quinn and take her in after her parents had kicked her out, but who were they kidding. Coach Sylvester doesn’t forgive. Not even Q.  
  
Laughter aside, when Quinn returns to her seat, Mercedes gives her a hug, and Kurt holds her hand.  
  
“I have some eyedrops,” Brittany offers.  
  
“Yeah, sure.” Santana wipes her cheek with one perfectly manicured hand, then takes the drops, pretending to put them in.  
  
Veneer of emotion, or lack thereof.

  
***

  
  
The hallway is almost creepy now that all the students have headed off to their various activities. It’s like the life has left the building. Spotting Quinn by her locker, Santana pauses mid-step. Quinn’s head bows into the locker, and she’s very still.  
  
Santana moves forward, a huntress that’s spotted her prey.  
  
“Hey. Your song wasn’t terrible,” she says. When Quinn looks up, Santana crosses her arms and leans back on the lockers.  
  
Quinn shrugs. “It was okay. It was no singing-duel. Funny, I never thought I’d see one of those outside of a movie. Maybe Mike and Puck can do a dance-war next.”  
  
“Oh. Mike would definitely, definitely kick Mr. Sammy Davis Junior  _Junior_ ’s ass.”  
  
Quietly, Quinn filled her bag with books.  
  
“How are you getting home?” Santana asks, because she knows that Puck is at practice already. Then for a moment, her face blanks, as does Quinn’s.  
  
“Isn’t that a question.” With a clang, her locker shuts, and Quinn wrinkles her brow at Santana. “What do you want from me, S?”  
  
“I’m not here to start something,” Santana objects. When Quinn seems unconvinced, Santana throws up her hands. “I’m not!”  
  
“O-kay.”  
  
Santana bites her lip, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Quinn lifts her bag onto her shoulder.  
  
“I’m taking the bus.”  
  
Most people at William McKinney don’t know that Santana was a referred to as “a little mouse” by her family when she was young. She’d always had a hard time finding words, especially when she really wanted to. In high school, it had been easier to follow first and then let her reputation speak for her.  
  
Now she’s staring. And Quinn’s staring. It’s a stare-fest. Why is this so hard.  
  
“Can I go now?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Santana!” Quinn’s voice bends in a weary whine. “I just want to get back to Puck’s house and have a few hours before his mother comes home to nag at me about mooching off of them, and  _he_  gets home to tell me all about the new  _Mega Man_  game.”  
  
“Why are you even staying with him? Didn’t you tell him that you wanted to do this by yourself?”  
  
“Amazingly? Places expect you to pay rent, if you want to stay there. And food? Costs money too.”  
  
“Don’t look at me like I’m dumb. I just don’t get why you have to live with him.”  
  
Quinn raises her hands. “Where else am I going to go? Who else is going to want me? Puck’s mom doesn’t even want me there, but she thinks he needs to ‘take responsibility.’ Don’t be jealous. You know we aren’t anything. Nothing but a couple of a beers and poor judgment.”  
  
Santana rolls her eyes and crosses her arms once again as she looks at the ceiling. “I know why you sang that song, and it wasn’t to make fun of Coach Sylvester.”  
  
Quinn just casts her eyes to the ground.  
  
“You’re not worthless. Do you know how many girls in this school have wished they were  _you_  this year?”  
  
“They’re not wishing that anymore.”  
  
“I  _hate_  your parents!” Santana explodes. “Do you know that? God, it’s like they think Jesus will be  _super stoked_  on them if they can just make enough people feel shitty.”  
  
Quinn lifts her head and the right corner of her mouth starts to turn upward. “Well, you know what they say. Blessed are the merciless. Blessed are they who step on the meek.”  
  
“I... You don’t...” Santana fumbles, knowing that description could apply to the two of them at times. “It’s not like that.”  
  
“I didn’t mean you,” Quinn laughs.  
  
“It’s true, though.” She pauses to frown. “Is that why you like Mercedes so much?”  
  
The irritation in her voice betrayed her, and as Santana’s cheeks grew warm, Quinn’s smile grew.  
  
“Are you jealous? Of  _Mercedes_?”  
  
“You like her. It’s not a popularity thing. You  _like_  her. Like, you would be friends with her if her popularity dropped tomorrow because she quit the Cheerios.”  
  
“Yeah. I like her. She has a big heart. She’s fun, and she challenges me. And I need to be challenged, I think.”  
  
“ _I_  challenge you.”  
  
“I can’t have more than one friend who does that?”  
  
“No,” Santana replies sullenly.  
  
“I have to admit, it’s probably not comfortable for you, but it’s kind of nice to have someone jealous over me right now. Lately, it’s like the whole school either can’t see me or doesn’t want me around. I guess I deserve it, but it’s not fun.”  
  
With exasperation in her voice, Santana moves to Quinn’s side. “You don’t deserve it. You had sex with a guy. It’s not illegal.”  
  
“I didn’t even enjoy it,” Quinn murmurs.  
  
Together, the two of them drift down the hallway. Santana’s hand inches toward Quinn’s, and when Quinn notices, her long lashed eyes widen, and her pink-glossed lips part.  
  
Before shyness can get the better of her, or something jaded and mean can defensively shoot out her lips, Santana grabs Quinn’s hand and squeezes it.  
  
“I think you’re perfect. Who else counts, anyway?” she demands.  
  
Despite the confusion in her eyes, Quinn’s smile widens.  
  
“I’ve always loved how much confidence you have,” Quinn whispers.  
  
“It’s fake.” Santana looks at Quinn and shrugs her head to the side. “Like my personality.”  
  
Quinn’s giggle causes a chill to run down Santana’s back. The tension inside her seems to unravel, and she feels lighter, floating. She leans over to kiss Quinn’s cheek.  
  
Really, with anyone else, Santana’s tongue would be down her throat, but Quinn’s an old fashioned girl. All appearances to the contrary.  
  
And those appearances or old fashionedness to the contrary, Quinn doesn’t look angry or disgusted. She looks at Santana with new eyes. With discovery. With appreciation. That little wrinkle between her brow appears, and Santana kisses that, too.  
  
It’s not the same as whatever’s going on with Quinn and her new friends, but that’s okay with Santana. She’s a selfish girl. She wants more than that. She wants it all. And she’ll take it.


End file.
